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Earlier this month at St James Theatre in London, Trinity College London’s Drama & Performance team ran the annual International Festival of Playwriting and Performance (IFPaP) this year it ran for 4 days, the longest festival to date!
So why do we do it? What is it for?
The productions that are staged are winning plays from our International Playwriting Competition (which happens earlier in the year) and winners are then awarded in two categories. The categories are ‘One-act plays suitable for performers’ ages 11 years and under’ and ‘One-act plays suitable for audiences aged between 12 and 16 years.’ The groups who then stage the productions are from youth theatres, schools and colleges.
When the international playwriting competition was first started back in 2010 the main purpose was for it to create new content for young people and for Trinity College London to engage with youth theatres/youth groups and as you will see when you read on we have certainly done that!
Since 2010 we have staged 11 plays, 2 of which have been taken to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well. The 11 plays have been staged by primary schools, Performing Arts Colleges, Drama schools and youth groups. Our plays have been taken to Language events in India and the winning young performers play from 2012 was even published as a special edition and given to teachers in India as a resource to support practical drama teaching.
The Festival has taken place at the Garrick Theatre, Unicorn Theatre (twice!) and this year we moved to St James Theatre in Victoria.
What’s in it for a school?
If you are a school performing in the festival then the possibilities are endless. You can read more about this in the schools packs I created in the IPC area of the VLE. This year’s performance of ‘Virtual Enchantment’ was performed by Hermitage Primary School and their teacher Laurie Steel had lots to say about why rehearsing and staging this play has helped with the curriculum:
“My class linked the performance to ICT in terms of persuasive writing. We created posters, leaflets and brochures encouraging people to attend the performance. Next term, I will link the prop making (the alien masks) to Design & Technology - we made the alien masks for the performance during an afternoon art session, but we will now evaluate the masks in light of the performance and try to improve on our designs, which also gives us the chance to research aliens! Maybe with next year’s scripts I will link the play scripts in with Literacy.” Laurie Steel, Class 5 Teacher, Hermitage Primary School.
If you are a school attending the festival you have access to free workshops and performances. This year our secondary school day which was focused around the teaching and learning of Shakespeare had over 200 students in the main house at St James theatre and English & Drama teacher, Katrina Hasthorpe from St Thomas More Language College in Sloane Square found out about our Festival and was very excited to get along with her Year 9 students!
Look at pictures and videos of the festival here.
Arts Award Voice came along and ran a theatre review workshop on the Saturday morning of the festival which was a great workshop for people to engage with. Some of the Youth Network Leaders (Mollie Tuttle wrote the reviews below) for Arts Award Voice then stayed and enjoyed the matinee and evening gala performances of the festival and wrote the following reviews:
In Conversation with David Wood - review by Flossie Waite
Youth Theatres & other Festival links...
This year we engaged with the Shakespeare Schools Festival and it was wonderful to have Coombe Boys’ School perform their abridged version of Henry V. The links to other festivals helps to highlight how Trinity’s Drama & Performance see the overlaps and strengths in what we do with other organisations, SSF and Trinity coming together on this platform was fantastic and all the more pleasing following our successful pilot of assessment with SSF in Autumn 2013. You can read more about how we assess SSF’s work here.
This year’s festival also saw the revival of previous productions and plays that had previously been awarded ‘Highly Commended’ were also brought to the stage. Putney Arts Theatre’s resident Youth Theatre Group 64 staged ‘The Belinda Tree’ and very excitingly for them they had a theatre critic in the night for one of their performances and this was what their 4* review said:
“...Using a relatively simple narrative, the play explores an impressively deep range of themes, including friendship, family, growing up and loss. These ideas are portrayed through a young cast who are skilled far beyond their years. Emotive performances from Ilhan, White and Tier make the central characters relatable and entirely convincing. The dialogue feels natural and contemporary for the age group, an achievement from both the actors and the writer John Moorhouse.”
You can read the review in full here.
Watch this space with what will happen in 2015...
Until next month,
Holly
Welcome back and a Happy New Year to you!
So where to begin?
Playwrighting - Internationally
2014 is going to be a very big year! We have our International Festival of Playwriting and Performance, which is even bigger and longer than our previous years. This is happening at St James Theatre in London from May 6th to May 10th. Find out more here.
The plays that are due to be performed are currently being read by our judging panel and the winner will be announced at the beginning of February. I will of course update you too in next months blog post!
Playwrongs?
So many students and even adults find the teaching of Shakespeare 'dull and difficult.' I often wonder why? I think back to my own schooling and feel fortunate that my English teacher was passion about Macbeth and The Tempest and all it left me thinking was why did this William man have such few words to choose from? Not, 'this is so boring and I don't understand.' I soon came to realise during my own teacher training (Secondary) that encouraging my teenagers to engage with Shakespeare was a real challenge due to the preconceived ideas they had!
It wasn't until I went to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's launch of Shakespeare Week that I appreciated just how crucial primary 
Shakespeare education is. I am delighted that Trinity College London are cultural supporters of the 2014 Shakespeare Week.
With this year being William Shakespeare's 450th Birthday here at Trinity College London we are also running several events in celebration of him as well as supporting other cultural organisations! Currently we are reviewing our Shakespeare qualifications, finalising our Shakespeare specific workshops for our International Festival, shadowing projects with The Globe (see more below...) and working to support the 1,500 schools engaging in the Shakespeare Schools Festival this year to gain certification for their work.
Education at the Globe
The team at The Globe Education Department are facilitating several projects with schools & teachers. Myself and the Head of Drama & Performance here at Trinity have been out and about observing these projects. During this month's blog I am going to talk about this one...
'Our Theatre'
The project is a celebration of the creativity and achievements of Southwark students and teachers and is free to all participating schools. Each school works with a Globe Education Practitioner over fifteen weeks across two school terms to devise and rehearse a scene selected in consultation with their class teacher.
To celebrate the life and work of Shakespeare the schools are doing this though an exploration of the ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech from ‘As You Like It’:
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
The 6 schools and the Globe's youth theatre will perform on the Globe stage at the end of February. As an observer of this project I have been to two of the schools that are taking part. Before Christmas I travelled to St. Saviours & St. Olave's Girls school to watch them working on the 'Childhood' stage of man, they were exploring this through the princesses theme in Richard III. It was really nice for me to observe young people engaged in their work and not having to do a teacher or student lesson observation like the last time I observed a lesson - looking at learning in a different way is quite liberating! It was pleasing to find out that these girls had 'applied' to their teacher to take part this project and were doing so after school in their own time. Even more pleasing, some of these girls were engaging in this project out of pure enjoyment and love for Drama beyond the classroom.
Just this week I went to observe at Tuke School. This exceptional SEN school was being led by an inspiring practioner and their dedicated teacher and specialist support assistants. They were working on Henry VIII Act V. Scene IV exploring infancy as their stage of man. The work that these students were doing was quite mesmerising! They were clapping out the syllables of the lines, certainly there was no 'playwrong' in Shakespeare creation of Iambicpentameter here it was helping these students, there was no boredom or confusion within this class, they were breaking down dialogue using the very rhythmical pattern Shakespeare had created. The still images they created representing the archetypes within the story was quite magical to watch unfold. The students in this group were breaking down the so-called 'barriers' of Shakespeare's language with severe disabilities ranging from Global delay to ODD and Autism. This project just showed me that there is no 'Playwrong' in Shakespeare's playwriting - simply a lack of wanting to 'play more.' I can't wait to see these students perform again at the "Our Theatre" performance next month.
Until next month,
Holly